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When you reach a certain age, you start realising there are many things you've taken for granted. This age comes differently to different people for different things.

Perhaps, at 15 you've realised it's really not possible for you to get away with almost everything anymore and you have to work hard at getting your allowance because being cute just doesn't cut it anymore. Maybe, at 22 the working world really doesn't care if you look pretty or not, so even though you got the job on your good looks you kinda have to work at proving yourself.

Then it's likely, that at 30 you are faced with difficult career choices because apparently working hard isn't enough and you will never get that promotion. Or probably that the higher your salary becomes it ironically becomes harder for you to save money when you turn 35.

How about the fact that you can no longer breeze through a 2.4km run at 17 minutes as you did in school because while the heart is willing, the flesh (and muscles) are weak? Or in the words of my bestie (in view of drinking): "I am not 18 anymore."

For me, this passage can lead to a profound post. I could talk about chances taken, opportunities missed, lovers forsaken, promotions passed over for. I could go on about physical health, emotional trauma, familial ties and friendship bonds. In the same vein, we could discuss career and finance, the young and the old, the heart versus the mind.

I can even tell you how I finally hit puberty at 28 with a acne outbreak and scarring on my cheeks, which I did not even have as a teen, ever? (God knows that if I have to suffer that, he better grant this puberty with its other elements - height growth and boob enlargement!)

But my breakthrough today that we are discussing is the peculiar case of my drinking powers, or the lack of. As a young adult, I was a decent drinker - not the best of course, but I can hold a decent amount. Then I stopped. Then as I entered my mid-twenties, I discovered, to my horror, I fall at a glass.

I've been training - having a drink every other night - in the hopes of well, buffing it up and not being a complete wimp. I've managed to go up to 3 glasses once, being whisky (I totally detest the taste of beer after the 4th sip) before my world started its threat on removing my depth perception.

I hit kind of a milestone today - sorta, coulda, maybe? Usually once I vomit, my head starts pounding and I need a soft surface to sleep, like, you know, within 10 minutes. The sorta coulda maybe milestone was after a wimpy glass of scotch today, I rested and lasted maybe half an hour before I felt really oozy and wanted to leave... just before my dear friends got a taxi for me I felt the urge to spew. So I walked to the washroom, vile came out of me (I can never quite fathom how vomit seems to be multiplied by infinity - how is it that I only had a bowl of noodles and 3 glasses of liquid in the last 6 hours with a erm, dump before that, and manage to vomit out the quantity of, let's say, an Olympic pool?! I exaggerate, but you know what I mean!), and I rested, not very glamourously for 1 minute on the thankGoditsclean floor in the bar.

Then, as magically as it started, I was fine. Of course, by then, one was at my door waiting for me to come out of the cubicle, another took my bag and was waiting for me in the loo (this gentleman not knowing that it's actually a female toilet even though it's open concept), a 3rd and 4th one at the main road hailing cabs for me. I got out, having that slight headache, expecting for the crash to come in... but it didn't! This is the time first I had alcohol induced puke and well, survived. I was joking to bestie that I might leave by 8pm (hey, I had an early day and we really really drank quite fast... relatively!). I will never do a Vandalin (sudden falling asleep at the location where you are drinking - dropping your glass of whisky optional), I will struggle and sleep on the cab or at home. But I was fine!

The crash never came, the headache left after I had sufficient coke - caffeine, sugar and water, I guess that's what I need in general after a puke!

Here's to surviving better with alcohol!

Comments for this entry

Like you, I can't drink. But long time ago I decided not to force my body to do what it cannot. At least, not for this sort of thing. And I tell my friends it's a natural defence mechanism my body imposes, so that I won't ever get liver poisoning and/ or suffer from alcoholism :)